Marginal Malone Friday, June 26, 2015

Lecture theatre, Weston Library

9:15–9:45 am Coffee

9:45–10 am Welcome

Kathryn James (Curator, Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library)

10 am–12:30 pm Session One

Chair: Adam Smyth (Tutorial Fellow in English Literature and University Lecturer in the History of the Book, University of Oxford)

“Simple and Honest Truth”: Malone, Steevens, and the Fight for Truth Tiffany Stern (Professor of Early Modern Drama, University of Oxford)

Malone in the Museum Arnold Hunt (King’s College, London)

Malone’s Marginal Discipline Ivan Lupic (Assistant Professor of English, Stanford University)

12:30–2 pm Lunch (on your own, with time to view the Bodleian exhibitions)

2–3:15 pm Session Two

Chair: Alexandra Franklin (Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library)

Eternal Lines: Shakespeare, Malone, and the Bodleian Library Clive Hurst (Former Head of Rare Books and Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Library)

His American Afterlife: Malone and James Marshall Osborn Kathryn James (Curator, Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library)

3:15–4 pm Comment & Discussion

Bill Sherman (Head of Research, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Professor of English, University of York)

Peter Martin (Professor Emeritus and Biographer)

convocation house

4:30–5:30 pm Keynote Lecture

Malone’s Chronologizing of Aubrey’s Lives (“putt in writing … tumultuarily”) Margreta de Grazia (Emerita Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania)

Reception to follow at Divinity School

Marginal Malonea symposium by the yaLe program in the history of the book and the bodLeian centre for the study of the book

Organizers Stephen Bernard (University College, Oxford), Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Kathryn James (Beinecke Library, Yale), and David Scott Kastan (Department of English, Yale)

Books and manuscripts from the collection of Edmond Malone (1757–1812) arrived at the Bodleian Library in 1821 as a gift made by Malone’s brother Lord Sunderlin. The collection contained many rare or unique copies of early editions of Shakespeare as well as working notes and marginal annotations on his readings of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline dramatists.

In 1936, the American student James Osborn scrupulously copied Edmond Malone’s annotations into his own copy of the 1800 edition of the Works of John Dryden, gathering Malone’s reading into his already extensive collection of English manuscripts. In the 1930s, as in the early nine-teenth century, Malone’s reading continued to define an understanding of evidence in English literary scholarship.

This symposium examines the lives and afterlives of Malone’s readings of English literature, appreciating the long influence of Malone’s critical perspective on those who agreed and disagreed with him. It takes as a particular focus Malone’s influence on the development of fields such as the study of Shakespeare and the definitions of evidence and persuasive evidence which he put forth.